1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an enhanced 8-vestigial sideband (E8-VSB) reception system compatible with an Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) VSB reception system of a related art, and more particularly, to an E8-VSB reception system for a signal transfer between a VSB broadcast reception chip manufactured under an existing standard and an enhanced data processing chip, which is a standard for an improved performance.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
For ground-wave digital broadcasting, the United States adopted an ATSC 8VSB transmission type as a standard in 1995 and has broadcasted since a second half of 1998. The Korea adopted the same ATSC 8VSB transmission type as the United States for a standard, broadcasted experimentally in May, 1995, and changed into a test broadcast system on Aug. 31, 2000. Each broadcasting company has performed a digital broadcasting since October 2001.
The ATSC 8VSB transmission type developed for a high quality, high definition (HD) broadcasting transmits Moving Picture Experts Group-2 (MPEG-2) digital image quality and Dolby digital sound. Currently, a system having enhanced performance compared with the ATSC 8VSB transmission type is under development to secure a higher reception rate than the ATSC 8VSB transmission type.
At this point, for a method of improving a reception rate, a coding method having improved error correction ability may be used, for it is possible to receive a digital broadcasting under severe environments where the related art ATSC 8VSB system cannot receive the digital broadcasting if the error correction ability is improved.
Therefore, an E8-VSB standard in a new E8-VSB transmission system compatible with the related art ATSC 8VSB system prescribes that data (referred to as enhanced data hereinafter) coded in such a way that performance improvement may be possible should be multiplexed and transmitted in an inside of the existing VSB signal (hereinafter, referred to as main data).
The related art chip for the VSB digital ground-wave broadcasting reception does not have considerations for a signal transfer to and from the E8-VSB chip, which is the VSB broadcast standard having improved performance and whose standardization is currently under progress.
For convenience in explanation in the following description, the related art VSB reception chip and VSB receiver will be used interchangeably and an enhanced data processing chip and an enhanced data processor will be used interchangeably.
That is, when the main data and the enhanced data are multiplexed and transmitted, the VSB receiver of the E8-VSB reception system which receives those data processes demodulation and equalizing and noise removal in the same manner as the related art VSB receiver. In addition, an error correction decoding process is processed in the same manner as an error correction decoding process of the related art VSB receiver. The enhanced data processor takes over an input from an error correction decoder of the related art VSB receiver and extracts only enhanced data to perform E8-VSB decoding and error correction decoding.
When standardization is preceded in the future and the enhanced data processor comes out in form of a chip, the chip-type enhanced data processor should be connected with the related art VSB receiver and used.
At this point, a signal that should be delivered from the related art VSB receiver to the enhanced data processor requires lots of pins. Therefore, the number of pins necessary for signal transfer to and from the enhanced data processor is increased. Accordingly, when manufacturing the VSB reception chip with consideration of the signal transfer to and from the enhanced data processor, there occurs a problem that the chip should be manufactured in a large size due to an increase in the number of pins.